IITians go global with online dating website

Brand IIT is in great demand, whether it is for jobs, marriage or sperm. But that shouldn’t make you give up your dream of hooking up with an IITian, because a date with one of these exalted geeks is now just a mouse-click away.

Brand IIT is in great demand, whether it is for jobs, marriage or sperm. But that shouldn’t make you give up your dream of hooking up with an IITian, because a date with one of these exalted geeks is now just a mouse-click away.

DateIITians.com, a social dating portal launched by IITians four months ago, has decided to go global – in view of the huge demand from youngsters.

“We wanted to provide a social platform where the techies and geeks could express their feelings. And here in India, who can be a better nerd than an IITian? In fact, before launching the website, we conducted a survey in Kolkata and found that most girls wanted to have an IITian boyfriend,” said Layak Singh, a 2011 graduate of IIT-Kharagpur who co-founded the portal.

Though the portal was initially launched for IITians, the high demand spurred site moderators to open it for others from IIMs, BITS Pilani, AIIMS and NITs too, Layak said. “There are more than 7,000 registrations, of which around 3,000 are IITians. Around 35% of those registered are girls,” he added.

To register, one has to produce an ID proof stating that he/she belongs to IIT or a similar institute.

“The account is activated only after the submitted information is thoroughly verified. We try our best to ensure that no fake profile creeps through. The account holder can send three kinds of requests – flirt, crush and propose. If the other party does not accept the flirt request, the former is not allowed to proceed further.”

So far, the site has facilitated over 1,200 flirt requests, over 700 crush requests and 56 proposal requests.

“DateIITians.com was a testing phase limited only to India. Now we are going to take it to a global platform, targeting the top 500 universities. The new site, Cogxio, aims to bring together like-minded persons from across the world,” said Layak.